As if there usually are not sufficient issues in Dredge’s world — like, say, the aberration of a fish that has a spiraling black void as an alternative of an eye fixed — a mysterious, towering iron rig now looms over the watery abyss.
The Iron Rig is the second piece of downloadable content material for developer Black Salt Video games’ Dredge, out Thursday on Nintendo Change, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Collection X, and it’s a very good purpose to hop again into one among 2023’s greatest video games. No matter the place you might be in your playthrough, you’ll be capable to load up the DLC and steer a course straight to the northeast facet of the map, the place the rig is planted. The brand new content material works as when you have been arriving at every other island in Dredge, besides that all the pieces isn’t instantly unlocked. As an alternative, to open up new areas of the rig for repairs and upgrades, for example, you should assist the Ironhaven Corp. by supplying analysis supplies, largely within the type of the wooden, material, and different gadgets you’ve been dredging up this complete time, or by catching fish throughout the accursed archipelago.
Black Salt Video games says on its Steam web page that there are greater than 50 new fish to catch, most of which could be present in a wretched, oozy oil that’s taken over a number of components of Dredge’s map, emerged from the rifts created by the aforementioned oil rig. The Iron Rig is the kind of DLC that you just’d technically be capable to play proper alongside the unique sport, as if it have been shipped with it. It takes you again round the entire map, revisiting every location and its creatures, new and previous. However when you’re enjoying it after finishing almost all the pieces there may be to do in Dredge, like I’ve, it’s a pleasant little jaunt again right into a world I spent a lot time in final yr.
It’d been some time since I performed Dredge, so it took a second or two to get used to the gameplay once more: The place do I promote fish once more? What do I must catch fish right here? Oh sure, and don’t keep out all evening on the ship. However as soon as I received used to the rhythm of Dredge once more, The Iron Rig felt like a wise little addition to the sport, not solely including quality-of-life updates to previous mechanics (like tea that staves off nervousness whenever you’ve ventured too far into the abyss too late at evening) but in addition piecing on new ship upgrades to work in direction of, like a brand new hull and additional tools with a brief little thriller that unfolds over round 4 hours.
For those who favored Dredge, you’ll like The Iron Rig. I haven’t performed Dredge’s first DLC, The Pale Attain, however The Iron Rig is double the worth, and, going off the numbers on The Pale Attain’s Steam web page, almost double the content material. However when you’re on the lookout for extra Dredge after you end The Iron Rig, you’re in luck: Documentarians NoClip launched a free documentary on the design of Dredge this week, which you’ll watch on YouTube. Past that, you’ll merely have to attend for the Dredge film adaptation, which was introduced in April from the manufacturing firm based by Sonic the Hedgehog producer and dj2 Leisure founder Dmitri M. Johnson.
